


Heat

by magebird



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Smoking, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magebird/pseuds/magebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom finds him on the balcony after the particularly tough jobs, cigarette crushed between fingers that are trembling if he looks closely enough. Arthur'd blame it on the cold if he ever asked, but he knows better than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** [I don't know, but I've got these two sentences scrawled on the back of a coffee reciept and I don't know what to do with them. Maybe someone else can shape them into something worth reading. ♥](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/3434.html?thread=3525738#t3525738)

Dom finds him on the balcony after the particularly tough jobs, cigarette crushed between fingers that are trembling if he looks closely enough. Arthur'd blame it on the cold if he ever asked, but he knows better than that. He knew better than to ask, too.

It’s February in Amsterdam, and his breath fogs, mingling with the heavier smoke from Arthur’s cigarette, drifting out across the street and disappearing. There are people on the street, even in the snow and at this hour, but from the seventeenth floor it’s not easy to hear their voices. Only the occasional snatch of laughter or scrape of a car’s tire against the frosty asphalt manages to rise up that high, and even that is thin and distant.

Arthur doesn’t say a word when Dom takes a place at his right, leaning against the railing and looking out and down. The air smells light and sharp, but the lazy scent of his cigarette is like a blanket across the cold, weighing down the air like an anchor. He would touch him, feel how cold his skin is, but it would break the spell and force them to confront directly the fact that they need comfort, now. That they’re leaning on their respective crutches and trying to shuffle forward. It’s far easier just to let it hang between them, unspoken and somehow more true.

The slightest sigh, and Arthur taps the ash off the end of his cig, watching it sprinkle down to be caught by the wind and whisked away. His shoulders are slumped under his coat—too light for the cold, but he won’t be out here long. He’s exhausted, physically and mentally, and Dom wishes for an instant that they had the luxury to relax.

Arthur could leave, of course, any time. He could go home and get a real job and settle down to live a life without nightmares and without dreams. But he won’t leave Dom, and they both know it.

There had been a short time, after Mal’s death, when he’d tried to say he was out of the game. He’d turned down a few jobs, made quite a show of settling, but in the end he was the one who called Dom to say, “I know a guy who needs an extraction.”

After all, it had always been Arthur who leapt into things head first in order to protect the rest, the one who took point. He was unable to let Dom go on alone. 

It was maybe part of the appeal for him to know that there was always the possibility things could go too far, that he could end up like Mal—

Dom clenches his hands around the icy railing, feeling his jaw tighten. That would never happen. Dom refused to allow it.

A hand enters his field of vision, and he looks up to see Arthur offering him the lit cigarette, his eyes still distant and looking off towards the city. Dom accepts it, holds it between his fingers for a second, and then takes a slow drag, letting the heat of the smoke rush down through his mouth and throat. It’s hot enough almost to scald. He lets his breath go out of him in a rush.

Arthur’s hand is like ice when it touches Dom’s cheek, and Dom jerks away on reflex before relaxing. He regards Arthur with cautious eyes, and doesn’t flinch as Arthur leans in, smelling of cigarettes and gunpowder and cold, and kisses him with lips warmed by the smoke.

Dom doesn’t pull away as Arthur claims his mouth, but doesn’t open up, either. He’s too tense to let himself enjoy it, can’t even freely accept the modicum of comfort Arthur is silently offering. The cigarette is burning low, too hot in his fingers, but he doesn’t let it go.

It takes too long for Arthur to give up and break the kiss, but it still happens too soon. Dom looks down, feeling like an idiot. Hell knows they could both use a little reassurance, and that reaffirming that they’re alive and had survived another dream couldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t be the first time they sought refuge in each other. But something stops him, a stupid stumbling block that makes him turn away and take one last hot drag off the cigarette before snuffing it out against the railing. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he hears Arthur sigh again and straighten up. 

“Me too.” Arthur turns and heads back inside the hotel. He doesn’t shut the sliding glass door behind him.

Dom stares out into the street for a long while more before shivers take him and he turns to follow him inside.


End file.
